This is what years of colonial imperialism, unwanted invasions and clandestine meddling while backing leaders who are hostile to their own population has wrought us in the Middle East.  We are now funding and assisting in one country, Syria and preparing to fight in another country, Iraq, the same people who have the ultimate and obvious goal of turning their aggression towards us wholly as soon as we help them with the Shia.

Watch: ISIS Leader In Iraq Makes Chilling Promise To America 

 katzendogs wrote: 

Its dead Jim.

(...) No. The most creative defense lawyer trying to defend these two occupations—these twin crimes against humanity—will be hard-pressed to do so, or even to defend them as ultimately vindicated by results. The results, it turns out are horrific.

These occupations, conducted in the name of the people of this country, are a national shame. But they were not the decision of the people, however the people may have been misled by warmongers’ disinformation. They resulted from decisions based on geopolitical calculations underlined by an amoral and brainless commitment to U.S. exceptionalism, including the right to slaughter without any international legal consequences.

The consequences are unfortunately not felt at the Hague, in the International Court of Justice that the U.S. refuses to join (on the straightforward grounds that U.S. forces must never be tried by foreigners, possibly falling victim to anti-American sentiment).

The consequences are rather felt in the innumerable ways rage and hatred express themselves, when the most arrogant and vicious attack the most weak and vulnerable. By inflicting such ongoing pain throughout the “Greater Middle East,” those secretly praying for another 9/11 seem hell-bent on provoking one, following their last gangbang in Libya and the abortion of the planned Syria assault last August based (once again) on lies. Their failures never deter them. They know they need never apologize. They are assured of employment as cable news “foreign policy experts,” fawning interviews and sometimes book sales.

These occupations have been failures, even if if judged by the occupiers’ expectations and plans. If judged by common global moral standards, they are world-class atrocities. That they should be followed by an al-Qaeda faction’s conquest of much of Iraq and Syria, and the prospect of a Taliban return to power in Afghanistan, is deeply troubling.

But hardly less so than the prospect of an ongoing U.S. berserker rampage designed to instill fear and obedience in a world less and less inclined to fear, respect or obey the exceptional nation, and the One Percent who drive its global aggression.

Iraq Crisis: Created by Bush & Blair and Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia
Bush and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost

Young men in Baghdad chant slogans against Isis outside the main army recruiting centre yesterday, where they are volunteering to fight the extremist group. (Credit: Karin Kadim/AP)

So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama.

From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles.

"Bush and Blair destroyed Saddam’s regime to make the world safe and declared that Iraq was part of a titanic battle against 'Islamofascism.' Well, they lost."

Apart from Saudi Arabia’s role in this catastrophe, what other stories are to be hidden from us in the coming days and weeks?

The story of Iraq and the story of Syria are the same – politically, militarily and journalistically: two leaders, one Shia, the other Alawite, fighting for the existence of their regimes against the power of a growing Sunni Muslim international army.

While the Americans support the wretched Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his elected Shia government in Iraq, the same Americans still demand the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his regime, even though both leaders are now brothers-in-arms against the victors of Mosul and Tikrit.

The Croesus-like wealth of Qatar may soon be redirected away from the Muslim rebels of Syria and Iraq to the Assad regime, out of fear and deep hatred for its Sunni brothers in Saudi Arabia (which may invade Qatar if it becomes very angry).

We all know of the “deep concern” of Washington and London at the territorial victories of the Islamists – and the utter destruction of all that America and Britain bled and died for in Iraq. No one, however, will feel as much of this “deep concern” as Shia Iran and Assad of Syria and Maliki of Iraq, who must regard the news from Mosul and Tikrit as a political and military disaster. Just when Syrian military forces were winning the war for Assad, tens of thousands of Iraqi-based militants may now turn on the Damascus government, before or after they choose to advance on Baghdad.

No one will care now how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been slaughtered since 2003 because of the fantasies of Bush and Blair. These two men destroyed Saddam’s regime to make the world safe and declared that Iraq was part of a titanic battle against “Islamofascism.” Well, they lost. Remember that the Americans captured and recaptured Mosul to crush the power of Islamist fighters. They fought for Fallujah twice. And both cities have now been lost again to the Islamists. The armies of Bush and Blair have long gone home, declaring victory.

Under Obama, Saudi Arabia will continue to be treated as a friendly “moderate” in the Arab world, even though its royal family is founded upon the Wahhabist convictions of the Sunni Islamists in Syria and Iraq – and even though millions of its dollars are arming those same fighters. Thus does Saudi power both feed the monster in the deserts of Syria and Iraq and cosy up to the Western powers that protect it.

We should also remember that Maliki’s military attempts to retake Mosul are likely to be ferocious and bloody, just as Assad’s battles to retake cities have proved to be. The refugees fleeing Mosul are more frightened of Shia government revenge than they are of the Sunni jihadists who have captured their city.

We will all be told to regard the new armed “caliphate” as a “terror nation.” Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, the Isis spokesman, is intelligent, warning against arrogance, talking of an advance on Baghdad when he may be thinking of Damascus. Isis is largely leaving the civilians of Mosul unharmed.

Finally, we will be invited to regard the future as a sectarian war when it will be a war between Muslim sectarians and Muslim non-sectarians. The “terror” bit will be provided by the arms we send to all sides.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
I have always given credit to Ron Paul on this. He was one of the few vocal opponents around during that time. 

Ron Paul tells it like it is......

 marko86 wrote: 

Again, it is a mistake to pigeon hole all of our foreign policy messes and imperialistic behavior to one administration and one particular invasion.  Make no mistake, neo cons still proliferate our government at all levels and in all branches of our government including and especially at the top with everyone since maybe Carter.

Unfortunately there will be more death and destruction before people decide to re-draw the boundaries into something more realistic instead the colonialism imposed boundaries. What a waste. I will never forgive or forget the neocons who got us into this in the 1st place.

Iraq disintegrating as insurgents advance toward capital; Kurds seize Kirkuk

 

It's interesting to see all of the neocons like Cornyn throwing fits; this shatters irrevocably the spurious notion that the surge worked, which was really the last, best hope for neocons attempting to insist, in the face of stark reality, that the invasion of Iraq was justifiable and sensible foreign policy.

 

As William Odom wrote 7 years ago in Victory is Not an Option,

 

 

Petraeus’ Real Failure | Middle East Research and Information Project

(...) The sixth chapter of the 2006 FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency Field Manual is dedicated to “Developing Host Nation Security Forces.” The chapter is less sanguine about the difficulties of creating a client army than the relentlessly positive Petraeus allowed in his self-promotion. This manual of imperial policing in the twenty-first century points to where problems may arise:

The behavior of HN security force personnel is often a primary cause of public dissatisfaction. Corrupting influences of power must be guarded against. Cultural and ethnic differences within a population may lead to significant discrimination within the security forces and by security forces against minority groups. In more ideological struggles, discrimination may be against members of other political parties, whether in a minority cultural group or not. Security forces that abuse civilians do not win the populace’s trust and confidence; they may even be a cause of the insurgency. A comprehensive security force development program identifies and addresses biases as well as improper or corrupt practices.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for US forces is accepting that the host nation can ensure security, using practices that differ from US practices. Commanders must recognize and continuously address that this “the American way is best” bias is unhelpful. While relationships among US police, customs and military organizations work for the United States, those relationships may not exist in other nations that have developed differently.

Though it draws on threadbare understandings of how culture works in warfare, the manual nevertheless acknowledges the fundamental paradox of using proxies to fight wars the imperial patron has started: that politics will trump technocratic solutions; that clients often have their own interests and will not necessarily act in the way their imperial patron may desire; that once ethnic and sectarian divisions are mobilized by the patron and cultivated (in ID cards, biometric data collection, detention profiling and counterinsurgency wall building) it is nearly impossible to relegate these fissures to oblivion while building a national army.

The latest version of FM 3.24, now renamed Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies, released without fanfare a few weeks ago, retains the trite references to culture, but T. E. Lawrence — quoted in the earlier version — is nowhere to be found. Here, working with and through the “host nation” receives two chapters, not only one. The new field manual is much more hard-headed and frank about what works. Its introduction to “indirect methods” of countering insurgencies is a glorious exemplar of military-speak:

An indirect approach seeks to support existing governments, security forces and groups through increasing capacity to counter an insurgency and enabling existing capabilities. This approach indirectly counters an insurgency by working through host-nation institutions or with groups in the society. The United States can use nation assistance and security cooperation to aid a host nation in building its institutions.

Beyond nation assistance and security cooperation, there are several methods that are indirect methods for countering an insurgency. Among these are generational engagement, negotiation and diplomacy, and identify, separate, isolate, influence and reintegrate. Beyond these methods, there are several indirect enablers that are important in any counterinsurgency. This includes integrated monetary shaping operations.

In the end, perhaps Petraeus’s ideas remain most influential here — though the failure is no less profound. Never mind the dubious fighting prowess of the Iraqi security forces trained by the US. One wonders about the extent to which these forces have the capacity to deploy “integrated monetary shaping operations” when ISIS is reported to have looted banks holding hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mission accomplished

Russia has started implementation of a multibillion dollar arms deal with Iraq, an official with the Middle Eastern nation’s government said Thursday.

Russia is to supply over 10 fully armed and equipped Mi-28NE Night Hunter attack helicopters to Iraq under a $4.3 billion agreement on cooperation in the defense and technology sector signed in 2012.

Ali Musawi, an aide to the Iraqi prime minister, told the RT television network there had been some doubts about the contract, but said “implementation of one of the contract’s stages has begun.”

He said the contract provides for the delivery of weaponry mainly for anti-terrorist operations.

Alexander Mikheyev, deputy general director at Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, said in late June that the helicopter contract also covers pilot and technical personnel training and the delivery of essential weapons systems.

This is the first contract with Iraq under the package agreement, he added.

деньги не пахнут

How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq's nuclear nightmare
Ex-UN, WHO officials reveal political interference to suppress scientific evidence of postwar environmental health catastrophe

same, last month

Half-Million Iraqis Died in the War, New Study Says
Household survey records deaths from all war-related causes, 2003 to 2011.

War and occupation directly and indirectly claimed the lives of about a half-million Iraqis from 2003 to 2011, according to a groundbreaking survey of 1,960 Iraqi households. The violence peaked in 2006 and 2007, say public health experts who were part of the study.

On March 19, 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, beginning a ground war that culminated in the rapid capture of Baghdad and overthrow of the regime led by Saddam Hussein. A coalition-led occupation of Iraq lasted until 2011, marked by repeated bombings, an al Qaeda-linked insurgency, militia warfare, and other bloodshed in the nation of 32.6 million people.

In the new PLOS Medicine journal survey, led by public health expert Amy Hagopian of the University of Washington in Seattle, an international research team polled heads of households and siblings across Iraq. The researchers, including some from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, aimed to update and improve past estimates of the human costs of the war and occupation.

"We think it is roughly around half a million people dead. And that is likely a low estimate," says Hagopian. "People need to know the cost in human lives of the decision to go to war.

The survey responses point to around 405,000 deaths attributable to the war and occupation in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. At least another 56,000 deaths should be added to that total from households forced to flee Iraq, the study authors estimate. More than 60 percent of the excess deaths of men, women, and children reported from 2003 to 2011 were the direct result of shootings, bombings, airstrikes, or other violence, according to the study. The rest came indirectly, from stress-related heart attacks or ruined sanitation and hospitals.

"Wars kill people all kinds of ways, not just in shootings. And it exacts a toll on the invaders as well as the invaded," Hagopian says. Some 4,804 U.S., British, and other coalition armed service members died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Past estimates of Iraqis killed in the war and occupation have varied widely. U.S. Army war logs released by Wikileaks in 2010 pointed to more than 100,000, while a widely criticized study conducted by Opinion Research Business, a London-based polling agency, estimated Iraq war deaths at 1.2 million people through 2007.

"We had all Iraqis knocking on doors to ask the questions of these households," Hagopian says, explaining a 98 percent response rate reported from the survey. Heads of households were asked about family deaths, and household members were asked about sibling deaths stretching back decades.

"This is a really serious and credible piece of work," says epidemiologist Leslie Roberts of Columbia University in New York, who has led wartime mortality surveys in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Iraq. "I think having an accurate record of what happened is extremely important," he says, pointing to a 2005 comment by then U.S. President George Bush suggesting that only about 30,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the conflict.

Roberts agreed with Hagopian that the household survey estimate is likely conservative, because it relied on the imperfect recollections of household members and largely missed the 1.1 million Iraqis living in displaced-person camps or in other countries.

Overall, the survey results point to Baghdad as the epicenter of violent deaths during the war. Coalition forces were blamed for 35 percent of the killings, followed by militias at 32 percent. The report showed that warfare was particularly intense in 2007, followed by a sharp drop in 2008.

Sadly, the violence continues, notes Salman Rawaf, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training, in a written commentary accompanying the survey. About 5,000 Iraqis have died in bombings and shootings this year, according to estimates by the French press agency, AFP.  The return of sectarian violence means "living in Iraq today is no longer about how many have died, but how future deaths should be prevented," says Rawaf.

Iraq still using bogus bomb detectors – and thousands pay the price
More than 4,500 people have been killed since the conviction of UK businessman, James McCormick, in April

Bogus bomb detectors are still being used in Iraq five months after a British businessman who supplied the devices was found guilty of fraud.

More than 4,500 people are estimated to have been killed in Iraq – 979 of them in September alone – since James McCormick, a former policeman, was convicted at the Old Bailey in April. His trial heard that the devices he was  selling, called ADE-651, were based on novelty golf-ball finders and had no scientific means of detecting explosives.

The Iraqi government promised after the trial that the fake detectors would be phased out. But they were still in use at checkpoints two days ago when 55 people were killed by bombs packed into cars in Baghdad. The responsibility for the attacks was claimed by an al-Qa’ida-linked group, which began its current campaign of violence around five months ago.

The sale of the devices to Iraq was alleged to have been aided by the payment of huge bribes to local officials. McCormick is said to have made a total of $75m (£46.2m) from the Iraqi government, charging $40,000 for each unit, which cost $20 to produce. (...)

 winter wrote:Point taken.  And undeniable for many people.  I have made 13 trips to various parts of Africa over the past three years.  Generosity, kindness, Love, exists in the midst of those with the least. So does horrific suffering. By no means do I represent myself as all-seeing, but I am informed and have seen much.

So, also true is the multi-millions of people barely living and for whom the best future they face is their memories.

 ScottN wrote: 
Misery is the most publicized thing in the world. Happiness, honor, kindness, generosity - a thousand little flowers blooming for every noxious weed. If we were really so terrible, so irredeemable, so irresponsible, we'd have killed ourselves off long ago.

Hope remains in the box when all the evils are loosed not because hope dares not leave, but because hope cannot leave. Hope is always at the bottom of the box because it is inexhaustible.

 miamizsun wrote: 
Oklahoma (I know, natural disaster, still), Iraq, Syria and on, list too long to write.  Misery seems to be the most common thing in the world. Is this best we Homo S. can do?

 miamizsun wrote: 
You and me both, bro.